There are hundreds of stock market apps available on the iPhone, but Creative Cream founders Zach Robinson and Andy Hamilton noticed an absence in apps that could track, obtain news, and discuss stocks that users were following. The Cream Creative, a Boston-based design firm, created Bullseye, which hopes to produce the ultimate mobile stock market experience.
Robinson met his current CTO Mike Neri while working at a local design firm and would discuss the markets and their stock interests during their commute to work by train. After Robinson left the firm, he met up with Andy at an industrial design firm who was interested in the stock market. Both Robinson and Hamilton left to found their own design firm called The Cream Creative.
Robinson and Hamilton discovered that there wasn’t a unified app to share their stock interests with friends and co-workers. “It’s so hard to know what stocks your friends have and when a stock goes up or a corporate action takes place, it’s so fun to share that,” Hamilton said. “It’s ridiculous that in 2015 you can’t download an app and share a stock with someone and have a conversation with an audience.”
“I would use my native iOS app to track my stocks, and in the most simplest fashion, there wasn’t a way to share stocks that I was watching with anyone else,” Hamilton said. Robinson and Hamilton would just text each other updates on their current holdings, but understood that it was difficult to share all the information they wanted. “We used to talk stocks on the train and at work, but once he [Robinson] left the company, that communication was essentially dormant,” Neri said .
Bullseye creates a modern all-in-one solution to this problem. With Facebook log-in information, Friends can share their stock updates and thoughts on their current holdings as well as view stocks their friends are tracking. Bullseye personalizes its updates based on your network, and provides recommendations according to your current stock interests and friends’ interests. In addition to this, Bullseye provides on-demand market and news information on the stocks that users are following.
The app overlays corporate news and stock charts so that users can see how the stock price reacted to the corporate news or actions.
As the app progresses in its lifecycle, users will be able to personalize their own sources within the app based on their viewing habits. “We’re trying to bring users exactly what they want,” Hamilton said. “We don’t want users to be inundated with information that they think is useless.” Bullseye will also allow news outlets to specifically target users based on their information and stock interests.
Robinson and his team are currently targeting investment clubs at universities around the country for Bullseye’s beta, and have done so with Heights Capital, a Boston College student-run investment club. But, overall Bullseye seeks to target retail investors. “Their daily habit is to open up and check on their stocks, we’re trying to provide a better way for them to see what’s going on with their portfolio and any news related to them,” Robinson said.
With more than half of Americans being retail investors, Robinson sees lots of potential growth for Bullseye with future investors. “There isn’t a communication tool built around this yet—it’s empowering for people to learn about the market at a younger age and these are the users that are going to be entering the market in the future.”
Bullseye is also seeking to establish relationships with news sources. “These are the type of people that want to be on our application—they can have their audience on our app and have more information about the people that they are talking to,” Robinson said. This will allow these news sources to target users based on their interests.
Right now, Bullseye is focusing on the US markets, but Robinson and his team have received requests for additional markets. Robinson noted the importance of foreign markets on the app in the future, but wants to ensure that the user experience on the American market is correctly done.
Bullseye is developing smart notifications that alert users about the stock they are following. “The iOS app doesn’t give you any push notifications when earnings are out, or when your stock is up like 5 percent,” Robinson said. “We’re currently in the fine tuning stages of these notifications right now.”
With Robinson, Hamilton, and Neri all having design backgrounds, they are focusing on providing a pleasant user experience. “We hope to provide a platform that is fun, casual, and easy to use,” Hamilton said. “We want to deliver what people want, when they want it, and how they want it, I just think the whole mobile offerings aren’t up to speed with what people would expect.”
Robinson believes that there is growth and as Bullseye’s user base grows, there is potential to earn revenue, but will not sacrifice experience. “Our competitive experience is our good user design and user experience, and if we can focus on that and win—then the revenue streams will figure themselves out,” Hamilton said. Hamilton believes in the future that Bullseye can be a platform for data collection so that companies can better understand who they are targeting. “One of the things we can do is collect data on social interests in the market and determine what’s trending.”
Currently, Bullseye is only available on iOS devices. Following beta and iteration stages, Robinson, Hamilton, and Neri are confident that they will expand to Android after they nail down the user experience on the iPhone app.
Featured Image Courtesy Of Bullseye
